by: Anthony J. Pawson, Ph.D.Full Professor, University of TorontoHead, Program in Molecular Biology and Cancer
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Center

Wednesday, May 16, 2001
3:30 PM, Room T-625 HSC

Dr. Anthony Pawson is Head of the Program in Molecular Biology &
Cancer and Acting Director at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of
Mount Sinai Hospital, Professor in the Department of Molecular &
Medical Genetics, and University Professor of the University of Toronto.
Dr. Pawson received an M.A. in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge,
England. He did his graduate training at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund,
working with Dr. Alan Smith on the expression of retroviral gene products,
and received his Ph.D. in 1976 from King's College, University of London.
He pursued postdoctoral work at the University of California at Berkeley,
with Drs. Peter Duesberg and Steven Martin, investigating the biochemical
functions of retroviral oncogenes and their role in neoplastic cell transformation.
In 1981, he was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia,
and in 1985 moved to the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto.

Protein tyrosine kinases are crucial regulators of cell growth and
division and many other processes. Their specificity of phosphorylation
of substrates is largely determined by direct association. In the
1980's, Dr. Pawson discovered the SH2 and SH3 domains that direct
protein-protein interactions of the src family of cytosolic protein
tyrosine kinases and many other signal transduction proteins. His work
on this family of proteins has become a paradigm for specifically
targeted signal transduction. At present, nearly all signal
transduction pathways are thought to be specifically targeted within
the cell, using protein-protein interactions to guide the flow of
regulatory information. Dr. Pawson's recent work demonstrates
the importance of these protein interactions in regulation of cell
growth and neoplastic transformation, insulin action, immune
surveillance, and neural information processing.

Dr. Pawson is a Distinguished Scientist of the Canadian Institutes
for Health Research, holds the Apotex Chair in Molecular Oncology,
and is an International Research Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute. He has received a number of awards, including the Gairdner
Foundation International Award (1994), the Robert L. Noble Prize from
the National Cancer Institute of Canada (1995), the George Drummond
Memorial Award (1996), the Boehringer-Mannheim Prize (1997), the Henry
Friesen Award (1998), the AACR-Pezcoller International Award for Cancer
Research (1998), the Dr. H.P. Heineken Prize for Biochemistry and
Biophysics from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
(1998), the Killam Prize for Medicine (2000) and the J. Allyn Taylor
International Prize in Medicine (2000). He is a Fellow of the Royal
Societies of London and Canada, and a recipient of the Order of Canada.